Plein air

I made this painting yesterday for a friend. There's a nice spot south of Mendocino where the forest gives way to grass covered hills. All sloping down into the ocean below. I really wanted to push the somewhat circular composition of the trees and small shrubs in the scene. I'm still not as confident with landscapes as I am with the figure so this was challenging but I'm quite happy with the results.

5-21-09

Here are some figure studies from the last 2 weeks.

5-6-09

More hour long studies. These things go so fast that sometimes, when I spend a lot of time on drawing, I feel like my color suffers. Lately I've been in a drawing state of mind and I think it's pretty apparent when I look at these recent paintings...



...Compared to some of these older ones I just dug up.


It's a pretty exciting balancing act trying to get accurate drawing while making the colors sing.

The landscape is almost finished. I'm just waiting for another sunny day to go out and wrap it up. I think it's supposed to stop raining here on Friday.